A damning report by the Parliamentary Accounts Committee claims not only is HS2’s timetable ‘unrealistic’, but that it is more likely to suck wealth from the regions than create it.

High speed rail campaigners have dismissed claims from an influential parliamentary committee that the project will not benefit Manchester.

A damning report by the Parliamentary Accounts Committee claims not only is HS2’s timetable ‘unrealistic’, but that it is more likely to suck wealth from the regions than create it.

But local leaders have rejected the claims – dubbing them ‘astonishing’.

After spending several months hearing evidence on the issue the PAC – led by Labour tax campaigner Margaret Hodge – said the government had not yet presented a ‘convincing’ argument for the line.

Ms Hodge said it had not proved HS2 was the best way to invest £50bn in the railways, slamming its timetable as too ambitious and its case as based on ‘fragile numbers’.

But most damningly for Manchester’s campaigners, the report claims it will be of no benefit to the regions. It says benefits calculated based on the time saved to commuters were flawed, as they do not take into account the fact businesses can work on the train already.

But Blackley and Broughton MP Graham Stringer – who sits on parliament’s transport select committee, which carried out its own report into HS2 last year – insisted Manchester had more to gain than anywhere else.

He said the line’s benefits are calculated more from capacity than from speed, with big benefits for the communities sitting on – and at either end of – its route.

Mr Stringer said recent criticism of HS2 was down to a ‘fightback’ from those trying to keep investment in London, adding: “If there’s any city going to benefit from HS2 it’s Manchester. It’s the biggest opportunity Manchester will have had since the Ship Canal.”

Writing in the M.E.N’s sister magazine Greater Manchester Business Week, Manchester council’s chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein also insists the ‘compelling’ argument for the line is capacity and regeneration benefits, not speed.

And Susan Williams, director of the North West Rail campaign, added: “It was the Public Accounts Committee themselves who said five years ago – after the West Coast Mainline had been upgraded, taking ten years and costing £10bn – that the problems of capacity had still not been solved.

“It is astonishing then that five years later they would be knocking a scheme that addresses this very problem.”

Map of the route of HS2 going through Greater Manchester - with different colours indicating what the different areas will be, such as a cutting, a viaduct, or a tunnel.

This map shows the different ways HS2 will go across the country (tunnel or cutting for example). Click on each area to see what the line will be like near you, and zoom in and drag the map around to see where it will all go.

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